The Festival of South Asian Children's Content 2018 event will be held in the Bay Area (ICC Milpitas), California on February 24th, 2018.

The idea is to bring together like-minded creators in the South Asian Children’s Content space to collaborate, network and reach out to the larger community to spread awareness about quality content that is available. Join us to meet everyone involved in the creation of South Asian Children's Content!

Meet the Content Creators and Vendors

Words with spunk. A slam dunk. We are Nosey Trunk!
Nosey Trunk aims to bring a fresh twist to cultural stories by retelling them in rhyme. Our books are colorfully illustrated and guaranteed to make you and your little ones smile. The Nosey Trunk brand was created by Ranjani, a native of Singapore who currently lives in San Francisco, California. To learn more about the author, her books, and the Nosey Trunk brand, check out our website or follow us on Facebook.

Sandhya Acharya grew up in Mumbai, India, and now lives in Santa Clara, California. When she is not writing, she is busy training for marathons, learning a form of Indian classical dance, and enjoying the childhood of her young sons. Her articles have featured in NPR(KQED), India Currents and IMC connect. She won the third prize in Katha 2017, a short story contest by India Currents and Wellstone Center in the Redwoods for her story “Cherry Blossoms”. Her short stories have also appeared in literary journals like Peacock Journal, and Aaduna. She also blogs regularly at www.sandhyaacharya.com

Born and raised in Mumbai, Vidya Murlidhar is an author and blogger who now resides in Charlotte, NC with her golf loving husband, witty teenage children, super fit father-in-law and a playful puppy. Her essays on motherhood have appeared in Chicken Soup for the Soul, Life Positive, Perfection Pending and Mothers Always Write. ‘ The Adventures of Grandpa and Ray’ is her first children’s book. You can also find her reflections and musings on mommyhooddiary.wordpress.com

T4Tales is an independent children's book publisher that offers Indian parents living across the world, interactive books in Indian languages alongside English transliteration. The books are designed with interactive features to help introduce these languages to children in their early years in a simple yet fun way. We have three books in print (Das Din, Gol Mol Bol and Bolo Kya?) and many more coming!
Pridhee Kapoor Gupta, a mother to two young daughters, and founder of T4Tales, writes books for 0-4 year olds in Indian languages. In her journey of parenthood predominantly outside of India, she quickly realised that there were not enough books in Indian languages that she could easily read to her toddlers, but funnily there were enough in English!. So, she set about correcting this imbalance through her books. A trained molecular biologist with a PhD from Germany, Pridhee has an undergraduate and masters degree from IIT-Delhi, and has worked at Macquarie University, Australia. After trying out life in Germany, USA, India, and Australia, she is now comfortably settled in Singapore.

Devika Joglekar is an author, illustrator and animator. Originally from Pune(India), she is now based in San Francisco Bay Area, California. Over the course of little less than 3 years, she has written and illustrated 10 children’s books. Her publishing house, Miheika Publications' mission is to showcase the rich and vibrant Indian culture to kids around the world, through aesthetically illustrated books.

Kitaabworld stemmed from a need for representation of South Asian children's literature in the mainstream. We advocate to spread awareness about South Asian culture, and provide resources for teachers, librarians and parents. First, we run an online independent bookstore through which we facilitate discovery and distribution of South Asian children’s literature. We curate books from around the world which feature traditional, contemporary and re-imagined stories on and about South Asia. Our selection showcases an authentic representation of the diverse elements of South Asian culture as well as mirrors the realities of growing up in the South Asian diaspora.We also focus on South Asian languages by providing resources that appeal to children. Second, we run a content platform, where we routinely publish curated booklists on various South Asian topics, conduct author interviews and feature guest posts on various topics. We ran a campaign in early 2017 called 'Counter Islamophobia Through Stories' to showcase positive stories and representations of Muslims. Third, we collaborate with libraries, schools and other institutions to experience and learn about South Asian culture through literature.

More than 30 years ago, Peter Usborne pioneered a new generation of books that prove that it is possible to create books that compete with the vast media that attracts children today. From activity books to neat fiction series, to internet-linked science and history encyclopedias, Usborne does books better.
Usborne and Kane Miller books are the most exciting, engaging, and educational books on the market today. They are high-quality, innovative, lavishly-illustrated, and best of all, they are the books kids love to read. Choose from over 1,800 bright, colorful, and fun titles covering a wide variety of subjects.
Shobana Arthy Nithyanandam, one of the Bay Area Usborne Book Consultant will be there to share all the Usborne Books.

Kare (Kids Who Care) is a social initiative to ignite the storytelling creative spark in every kid that cares.
Kare aspires to inspire young kids to be authors to make the world a better place to live in.
Kare is a place…
Where kids and cherished and empowered
Where story books are produced to institute positive changes
Where the community unites to promote awareness
Kare seeks to bring together kids who care, parents who cherish kids, passionate authors, community volunteers, and business partners to produce and distribute creative content to promote awareness about environmental conservation, wildlife preservation, sustainable energy and other related topics.

Vitamin Simple wants to bring learning to the preschool and elementary school kids with a creative approach.Learning is a rewarding process, simple & creative content like Vitamin Simple, can make children thrive in learning. We want to tickle the young minds with creativity, songs and techniques which improves memory and learning abilities. The only goal of Vitamin Simple is making learning simple and fun.

Our Proud Sponsors

Jyoti Yelagalawadi has enjoyed the art of telling stories for her entire life. She passes on this love of storytelling to her students at Lekha School of Creative Writing, of which she is the founder. An avid animal lover who grew up in a family of scientists, Jyoti was initially drawn to the veterinary field, and received her B.S. in Biology and Computer Science and a minor in Creative Writing. Despite her love of science, her passion for writing took over, and many of her written works reflect her love of animals and her interest in the relationship between man and nature. Some of her published works include the educational picture books, Laugh with Dinosaurs and Deep Sea Creatures, as well as the children’s stories Red’s Adventures, Chirpy the Chipmunk, and The Vegetarian Cat. Jyoti’s work has also been published in various magazines. Learn More...

Brain-O-Magic is a whole brain development program that teaches lifetime skills to students from age 5-13 years old. Our programs are abacus based mental math programs. It is designed by a team of experts in the educational field. Our scientifically developed curriculum goes beyond teaching Mental Math to your children. At Brain-O-Magic, we develop the less dominant right side of the brain and improve the communication and coordination of both sides. Children who participate in this program gain creativity, memory, speed and accuracy skills as well as an increase in self-confidence and self-reliance. They have also shown remarkable improvements in academics. Learn More...

Drawn to Discover is a progressive and pioneering visual literacy and learning solution for children. We manifest creativity and self confidence through interactive ENRICHMENT video lessons built to develop fine motor skills into cognitive growth. The core of Drawn To Discover is to build handwriting through pencil grip and fine muscle control. Your child’s ability to reason, create, and comprehend will develop through the educational STEAM inspired lessons. This is the foundation that will help your child reach their potential.
Learn More...

FSACC Creative Writing Competition

Winners will be announced LIVE at the Feb 24 event!

FSACC Day 2 - Feb 25, 2018

Children's Literature Symposium

10 am - 4 pm on Feb 25th, 2018 at New Delhi Restaurant, San Francisco

Sessions

1) THE ROAD NOT TAKEN: routes and roadblocks on the path to writing and publishing for children by Meera Sriram
2) A Meandering Journey by Kashmira Sheth
3) Writing Fact and Fiction by Jyoti Yelagalawadi
4) Raising a Writer - Tips for Parents by Mitali Perkins and Madhusree Bose
5) My Path to Now - Wendy Anderson Halperin

Symposium Sessions and Author Details

Meera Sriram switched gears from electronic chip design to children's literature back in 2006. Since then she has been a strong advocate of early and multicultural literacy through blogging, storytelling, and writing for children. You can read more about her work at www.meerasriram.com While sharing her own journey, she'll talk about exploring varied avenues in navigating the path from story conceptualization to manuscript submission. She also hopes to address everyone's thought bubbles popping up during and at the end of her talk.

Kashmira arrived in the USA to pursue an undergraduate education in science and eventually ended up being a story teller. Her writing journey was inspired by reading children’s literature (classics like A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle and the Little House on the Prairie Book Series by Laura Ingalls Wilder) with her two daughters. Kashmira is the author of nine published works for children ranging from picture books to young adult novels. She has a chapter book series coming out in the fall of 2018. Kashmira will share her insights about crafting, publishing, promoting, and keeping the love for writing alive even when the muse is nowhere to be seen and rejections are piling up. She encourages participants to come with plenty of questions about writing for children.

Wendy Anderson Halperin is a renowned children’s book author and artist, educator, presenter, former advertising creative director, and visual literacy pioneer. After spending several years working for major advertising agencies in New York and Chicago, Wendy set off to San Francisco to further study art and develop her own skills. She became a children’s book artist and spent many hours in classrooms drawing with children. She always noticed a lack of consistency with pencil grip and began to contemplate the struggle with this motor skill children were having. One day while drawing and listening to a radio newscast, she learned of a trend therapists were developing for Alzheimer’s patients centered around learning to knit to re-develop their fine motor skills. The theory was that the fine motor communication from the fingers and thumb with the brain helped build or retain cognitive development, memory, and thinking. She began to study, research, and interview experts in this field and quickly tied it to the pencil grip struggles she observed in early elementary classrooms. This learning fed the development of her literacy program and nonprofit, Drawing Children Into Reading. Now, over twelve years into the success of DCIR, she has partnered with the Drawn To Discover team to bring this visual literacy program to the web for everyone to experience.

Mitali Perkins has written ten novels for young readers, including Rickshaw Girl (chosen by the New York Public Library as one of the top 100 books for children in the past 100 years), Bamboo People (an American Library Association's Top Ten Novels for Young Adults) and Tiger Boy which won the Charlotte Huck Honor Award and the South Asia Book Award. Her most recent young adult novel, You Bring the Distant Near has received great acclaim and was nominated for the National Book Award. She has been honored as a "Most Engaging Author" by independent booksellers across the country and selected as a "Literary Light for Children" by the Associates of the Boston Public Library. Mitali was born in Kolkata, India before immigrating to the Bay Area with her family.

Madhusree Bose is the proud mother of three daughters, including Mitali, and grandmother of four grandsons. She was born in Kolkata, India, and immigrated here with her family in the 1970s. She is retired from teaching, and was honored to be named a California Teacher of the Year.

Jyoti Yelagalawadi has enjoyed the art of telling stories for her entire life. She passes on this love of storytelling to her students at Lekha School of Creative Writing, of which she is the founder. What does it mean to write honestly? How can we as writers and parents guide the new generation to write factually? How can authors help in raising a global citizen through their writings? Jyoti Yelagalawadi. Author, publisher, and mentor will discuss this and other ways to encourage writers to think responsibly